"Wealth fears democracy." That line has my mind reeling. The entire piece, really. Update the targets and the vocabulary, and you could run it tomorrow.
It also makes me question who is investigating the current hangings of Black people ruled as suicides locally. They should be counted together.
Thank you for this. What an amazing intellect! Sometimes----when I read essays from the past---I can't help but think the human race ---instead of developing better thinkers and writers and orators as we go along---has been going steadily down hill. There is so much understanding and insight in this essay. It's as if the analysis wrote itself. So prescient (as I notice Bruce Patt also says.) Du Bois says that folks are afraid of "many things but usually of losing their jobs, of being declassed, degraded or actually disgraced; of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans for their children; of the actual pangs of hunger; of dirt, of crime. And of all this, most ubiquitous in modern industrial society is that fear of unemployment." That fear won't go away until we upend out economic system. We're a long way from that.
“The secret mass lie.” If I’d been able to drag a yellow highlighter across just one phrase on the screen of my tablet, that would have been the one. Sure, this deeply prescient essay is a lighthouse illuminating not only the states of class warfare of 1925, but also of every era everywhere. From “Making America Great Again” to “Israel has a right to exist,” and from purging of the military of Black leaders to arming thugs who abduct suspected “illegal aliens.” DuBois has offered a view of the fundamentals of so-called human civilization that points in every direction simultaneously. I agree with the above comment by Johanna Hays that an entire college course in history could consist of interrogation of the terms, histories and relationships among the dynamic elements so powerfully expressed here (let’s include other disciplines: psychology, cultural anthropology, economics…everything).
Doc Du Bois continues to be prophetic. In 1903's The Souls of Black Folks, he stated, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, and as he does in the above article, he implored all who believe in humanity to resolve this issue. It seems that, to this point, not enough people believe in humanity.
When I ‘taught’ American History 102 I could have scrapped the syllabus and made us all work through this essay word by word. Of course I would have been fired but I was fired anyway so what the heck.
In DeBois in 1925 he says: in 1918 in order to win the war we had to make Germans into Huns and rapists. Today we have to make Negroes into rapists and idiots. Tomorrow we must make Latins, South-Eastern Europeans, Turks and other Asiatics into actual “lesser breeds without the law”.
The white Southern-created myth of “The Cause” continues to haunt our society today. Today’s Klan, of course, wears khaki slacks, baseball hats and balaclavas in a weak attempt to look mainstream.
This essay is amazing. I have never read anything more cogent. I will feel compelled to say more as I absorb it but the initial premise about the consuming fear of losing one’s livelihood rings so true I’m speechless in part of the elegance and compassion of the argument.
"Wealth fears democracy." That line has my mind reeling. The entire piece, really. Update the targets and the vocabulary, and you could run it tomorrow.
It also makes me question who is investigating the current hangings of Black people ruled as suicides locally. They should be counted together.
Thank you for this. What an amazing intellect! Sometimes----when I read essays from the past---I can't help but think the human race ---instead of developing better thinkers and writers and orators as we go along---has been going steadily down hill. There is so much understanding and insight in this essay. It's as if the analysis wrote itself. So prescient (as I notice Bruce Patt also says.) Du Bois says that folks are afraid of "many things but usually of losing their jobs, of being declassed, degraded or actually disgraced; of losing their hopes, their savings, their plans for their children; of the actual pangs of hunger; of dirt, of crime. And of all this, most ubiquitous in modern industrial society is that fear of unemployment." That fear won't go away until we upend out economic system. We're a long way from that.
“The secret mass lie.” If I’d been able to drag a yellow highlighter across just one phrase on the screen of my tablet, that would have been the one. Sure, this deeply prescient essay is a lighthouse illuminating not only the states of class warfare of 1925, but also of every era everywhere. From “Making America Great Again” to “Israel has a right to exist,” and from purging of the military of Black leaders to arming thugs who abduct suspected “illegal aliens.” DuBois has offered a view of the fundamentals of so-called human civilization that points in every direction simultaneously. I agree with the above comment by Johanna Hays that an entire college course in history could consist of interrogation of the terms, histories and relationships among the dynamic elements so powerfully expressed here (let’s include other disciplines: psychology, cultural anthropology, economics…everything).
Doc Du Bois continues to be prophetic. In 1903's The Souls of Black Folks, he stated, "The problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color-line, and as he does in the above article, he implored all who believe in humanity to resolve this issue. It seems that, to this point, not enough people believe in humanity.
When I ‘taught’ American History 102 I could have scrapped the syllabus and made us all work through this essay word by word. Of course I would have been fired but I was fired anyway so what the heck.
Dr. DuBois’ description and assessment of Ohio is amazing. What a powerful writing. Thank you.
Just stunning and heartbreaking as nothing has changed. We are still there.
Tour de force!
In DeBois in 1925 he says: in 1918 in order to win the war we had to make Germans into Huns and rapists. Today we have to make Negroes into rapists and idiots. Tomorrow we must make Latins, South-Eastern Europeans, Turks and other Asiatics into actual “lesser breeds without the law”.
The white Southern-created myth of “The Cause” continues to haunt our society today. Today’s Klan, of course, wears khaki slacks, baseball hats and balaclavas in a weak attempt to look mainstream.
We must rip off the masks and let these wannabe Klanners and neo-Nazis face the light of day….just as cities are starting to do with the thugs of ICE.
This essay is amazing. I have never read anything more cogent. I will feel compelled to say more as I absorb it but the initial premise about the consuming fear of losing one’s livelihood rings so true I’m speechless in part of the elegance and compassion of the argument.